


Criminal World

by ravensinflight



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Sexy Times, reference to violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-20
Updated: 2017-12-20
Packaged: 2019-02-17 09:02:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13073592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravensinflight/pseuds/ravensinflight
Summary: Hard to be a player when you don’t know the game. A semi-Atomic Blonde AU from the lovely Rumbellesecretsanta prompt by @annagingil: “secret lovers, spies in day.”  Title by Bowie, hot mess by me. Here, have some songfic like it’s 2004. I hope you enjoy.





	Criminal World

  
  


_You never told me of your other faces_

_You were the widow of a wild cat_

_And now I know about your special kisses_

_And I know you know where that's at_

_I guess I recognize your destination_

_I think I see beneath your make-up_

_What you want is sort of separation_

_This is no ordinary_

_This is no ordinary_ \--“Criminal World” by David Bowie

  


Belle grabbed handfuls of hair, twisting it with practice between her fingers. She shoved it roughly but efficiently under a short red wig, lowering the long fringed bangs over the tops of her eyes. She carded her fingers through the rest of the bob to make sure it was lying flat and even. It would be easier with a mirror, but she plans on completing her transformation in the stall of this godawful ladies’ room before glancing at the total effect on her way out.

Boots, impractical but stylish jacket, new earrings and a couple of slap bracelets complete the look. She wants a look that says “party girl” but inconspicuous, so most of her ensemble is black or navy. Everything she was previously wearing, including the flat shoes, blonde wig, professional cut dress, and stud earrings get shoved into the oversized slouch bag covered in heavy leather fringe that she wings over her shoulder like an infantry pack.

Less than five minutes after Belle entered, Lacey leaves.

  


She hadn’t had enough sleep but she’d had enough coffee. The coffee in this country was dismal; it was so mild she could probably brush her teeth with it, but that made it easier to imbibe large amounts without necessarily intaking food to protect her stomach. Belle enjoyed food a great deal, so it was a source of consternation that her stomach could be somewhat touchy at times. People in her line of work really shouldn’t develop quirks that get you noticed, or remembered. 

Or slow you down: she was almost 20 minutes behind her self-imposed schedule. That was still within the range of allowable delay but it didn’t improve her mood. She’d needed the extra time to change hotels, or rather, have Lacey change hotels via payphones at the airport. Then of course she had to become Lacey in that dive of a ladies’ room, and at last she was ready to meet the Stationmaster.

She’d checked her bags in at left-luggage until after the meeting; depending on how competent she assessed this “Mr. Gold” to be, she might need to take further precautions with her belongings for a long-term stay. 

Belle internally rolled her eyes at the name Mr. Gold. She’d asked back at Home Office what year exactly did this agent think they were living in? Regina had given her half a smile and said “You’ll have to ask Gold--he’s been Stationmaster so long he may have lost touch with reality.”

Belle reached the rendezvous site 15 minutes before Mr. Gold and 10 minutes later than she wanted to. The discotheque thrummed like a hive of bees from the outside. She found a spot in the shadows down from the entrance, leaning against it in apparent casualness while lighting a cigarette. She balanced the danger of the glare from the tip drawing notice against the suspicious nature of being noticed doing nothing at all, and added the adoption of a bored look while she slouched to clearly indicate ‘waiting for someone and not happy about it, do not approach.’

She was intently scanning the people as they entered and exited the club, but she felt more than heard that something was behind her a moment before the man began speaking.

“Ms. French?” A voice asked in accented English.

She turned her head slowly and controlled, like a snake hypnotizing prey.

“Mr. Gold?” She responded in her own accented English. Which accent she’d chosen for this engagement not quite evident from only those two words.

There was a tapping sound from the shadows behind her, as a man with a cane and a hideous hat emerged from one shadow around the corner of the building to join her shadow. Belle’s internal map told her that he’d had to come up from the river banks and detour around several warehouses to get that drop on her. Not the path she would have taken, but not wholly unexpected. 

Belle knew she still looked like a bored party girl and took a slow drag from the cigarette while eyeing the man. Shortish, dressed nicely apart from the hat, cane was a bit ostentatious (necessary?), older but that was too be expected based on the briefing at Home. “You’re late,” she informed him. She’d decided to use R.P. for this assignment for regional neutrality. The reprimand sounded lovely in BBC English.

The man smiled far too widely. “No, I’m not.” Fair enough, In a flash of the headlight of a passing car, she caught sight of the glint of something in his mouth. A gold tooth? Her estimations of this agent were . . . conflicted. He read like something out of an old spy comic with advertisements for decoder rings in the back. On the other hand, he’d almost gotten the drop on her. Almost.

“Shall we?” Mr. Gold held out his arm for her like an old-time gallant. She threw back her head and gave a drunken laugh, grabbing his arm sloppily while her legs contrived to fall in step with him and not topple her over despite the lack of direction she was apparently giving them. The wool coat covering his arm was warm and expensive feeling. He smelled like woodsmoke. Mr. Gold grinned again, and they started down the street; just a businessman on a Friday night picking up a good-time girl. They disappeared into the shadows together.

  


_(ah, ah, ah)_

_What a criminal world_

_The boys are like baby-faced girls_

_What a criminal girl_

_She'll show you where to shoot your gun_

_What a typical mother's son_

_The only thing that she enjoys_

_Is a criminal world_

_Where the girls are like baby-faced boys_

  


Belle lit up a cigarette while scrutinizing photographs.

“I really wish you wouldn’t do that in bed,” Gold said, not looking up from the papers he was reading in the armchair next to the bed. Belle turned her head slightly to give him a languid look while she exhaled a stream of smoke nonchalantly. She sat in the middle of Gold’s ridiculously large bed, wearing only her own lingerie and his shirt. Black and white glossy photographs littered the bed around her. She’d made a good connection in befriending Merida, novice intelligence agent. Merida tended to blunder about and into things, but she took a damn fine shot.

For a moment, Gold looked up at her sternly from the armchair before his face softened in resignment and he looked back down at his papers. He wore a an honest to God _smoking jacket_ without a trace of irony, looking like some ersatz Sherlock Holmes in the overstuffed brown leather chair.

Frankly, everything about Gold’s abode was rather “overstuffed” for Belle’s tastes, yet she found herself drawn here for their trysts more often than not. She’d made sure Lacey kept changing hotels every few weeks, starting out somewhere posh then slowly degenerating in quality, the slow decline of a woman living a little too outside her means for a little too long but who just _had_ to keep the party going.

Belle didn’t really mind the growing inferiority of her base-camp’s amenities; her frustration was with how long this infernal investigation was taking. She should have been further along ages ago. Home needed her to run a traitor to ground, but so far she’d just been running in circles over this Godforsaken city.

“This Hatter character is all over the map,” Belle muttered, tossing photographs into rough groupings in an effort to switch up the patterns they presented.

“Character is definitely the word to describe Jefferson,” Gold said laconically. 

“You really trust that guy with your import and export dealings?” Belle asked him. She made a mental note to get better control of her accent. She’d been getting slack around Gold.

Gold grinned wolfishly and she caught sight of the gold even in the low light of his cavernous bedroom. The man was a such a peacock, she thought, but not without fondness. 

“I don’t trust anyone, dearie, that’s how I’m still in this game.”

The fondness vanished and she made a mental note to get better control on that as well. She stared at him in silence until the grin faded and he deigned to answer her questions. 

“Jefferson might have fried most of his common sense with drugs, but his abilities to focus and execute a plan are quite keen,” Gold admitted. “Plus God knows how he gets across some of the borders he does carrying the things he does.”

Belle made a hum of agreement. “That’s one of the reasons Home Office flagged his file.”

“You know, you can hear the way you emphasize certain things, almost as though they’re titled peerage,” Gold said with amusement. “‘Home Office,’ or my favorite, ‘Stationmaster.’ It’s quite endearingly formal.”

Belle bristled at his tone, like he was describing the tricks of a favored pet. 

“I don’t see why calling something by its proper name is quite so funny,” she said coldly, her movements regarding the photographs turning brisk. They’d reached that inevitable point in their interactions when it was probably time to leave.

Moving soundlessly and with ever-surprising grace, Gold left the armchair to push the photographs aside and crawl up the bed to loom above her. She met the maneuver with a cold stare and the quirk of an eyebrow. Better make this good, her look told him.

The smoking jacket belt had come loose and the burgundy silk folds of it were starting to part. Gold took no notice of it as he started to trace a fingertip along the edge of his shirt she was wearing. There was still amusement on his face, but behind it a kind of heat Belle thought boded rather well. 

“Forgive an old man his small pleasures,” Gold murmured, his fingertip reaching the slight swell of her stomach and turning into a full palm caress. “When you’ve been at this game as long as I have, you start to grow complacent about the whole circus. Fresh blood is . . . invigorating.” He finished the statement by moving his palm down a few critical inches and then lowering himself enough to start gently mouthing at her neck.

Belle smiled slightly despite herself. “Old Man?” She said mockingly. He grumbled against her neck, moving his mouth down to her décolletage.

“Yes, precisely. Much too old for chasing traitors all around the world whilst trying to keep a woman like you happy.” He somehow managed to to get all that out while never letting up his gentle assault. His hand moved just _there_ and Belle was arching into him.

“I took care of the chasing part, darling, you’ve just got to lie back and think of Home Office,” she managed around breathing that was growing more labored. He chuckled against her, a delightful shiver resulting.

“Ah, the benefits of _teamwork-_ ” he punctuated the word with a twist of his clever fingers and Belle wrapped one of her legs around his hips, pulling the smoking jacket completely open as she speared one hand into the locks of his hair and scraped her nails along his scalp. Her other hand was snaking inside the open jacket to press him more firmly against her. 

He paused his oral exploration though his hand never ceased moving, if anything growing more intent with its ministrations while he watched her flushed face from atop the length of her body.

“You know a real character to look at,” he said idly. Of course Gold would talk shop while getting her off. She tightened her fingers in his hair which only provoked a Cheshire grin.

“Oh? Who might that be?” She tried to match his disinterested tone but her rapid breathing made it somewhat difficult. She decided sliding the hand inside the jacket into more interesting territory would level the playing field. Gold did so like his little games.

His own face was growing flushed as he struggled to maintain the same nonchalance as before. “Our good friend-” he grunted slightly “-Officer Rogers. A man that turns traitor to his own government to feed our agents information might decide to doublecross us if the price is right.” She gave a little hum of agreement and a particularly good squeeze of her hand. He gave up pretending to be unaffected by removing her panties with a sharp tug and blanketing her fully, hands and assorted fabric barriers being removed in the interest of getting down to business.

Belle turned her self-satisfied crowing into moans. They didn’t precisely keep points in their little tête-à-têtes and the scoring was always up for debate, but she felt certain this round had gone to her.

Belle’s decision to bed the Stationmaster was a conscious one; she found it an extremely enjoyable way to relieve the tedium that often accompanies these sort of drawn-out assignments. She also knew it was an excellent way to accelerate feelings of trust or inclinations to grant favors between an agent and a potential asset. Everyone was a potential asset, even other agents. People were either assets or problems in Belle’s experience.

Not that sleeping with Gold was much of a _hardship_ Belle mused as they moved in increasingly frantic tandem. Man was hotter than sin. She was beginning to suspect she’d been here a bit too long; she was thinking she might even miss this once the assignment was over.

In the languid stillness that followed their coupling, Belle traced a finger down a sleeping Gold’s back in the blue-black darkness of the room. He didn’t even stir from his position, face-down on the bed in the depths of slumber. When Belle realized she’s been wondering on the likelihood of an assignment taking her near this station again anytime soon, she decided it was past time to to finish things here and go back Home.

  


_You've got a very heavy reputation_

_But no one knows about your low-life_

_I know a way_

_to find a situation_

_And hold a candle_

_to your high life disguise_

_You caught me kneeling_

_at your sister's door_

_That was no ordinary stick-up_

_I'm well aware just_

_what you're looking for_

_I am no ordinary_

_I am no ordinary_

  


Because of the rain that started to fall, it was hard to tell the newly forming puddles apart from the pools of blood. 

Belle could feel her hair, her real hair, snaking in cold tendrils down her neck and nearly bare shoulders. It was freezing out, but she already felt numb. She spared a thought for her eye make-up, the smoky nightclub look was probably running down her face like a hideous mask that it would take ages to clean-up and hideaway, but she couldn’t find it in herself to care too much at the moment.

Officer Rogers was dead. She’s not sure who else might be as well. Merida? Jefferson? It had all gone tits up.

The Operation had failed utterly, _stupidly_ , it was doomed before it began! Someone had betrayed them, betrayed them all, and they’d set her up, goddamn them. She was well and truly burned unless she found him, the real traitor, and hoped to god Home Office granted her clemency for this spectacular fuck-up.

She heard a noise above the hiss and patter of the rain, a steady tapping on the pavement drawing near her. Her tongue moved unconsciously to the side of her mouth and tasted blood. Gold emerged from the growing gloom, wearing his ridiculous hat and coat, gloved, the rain running off him like some kind of black duck. She tried to muster some surprise, but she’s too exhausted, on her knees on slick pavement next to a dead man with all the fight drained out of her.

“This is it, isn’t it?” She murmured, a voice more suited for Gold’s bedroom and not even sure he can hear her.

One of Gold’s hands was holding his cane, the other was holding a gun. On her. He spared a glance for Rogers’s body and then looked back at her. The part of his face she could make out was unreadable. 

“Well, this is somewhat unexpected,” he said mildly. “But yes, I rather believe this is it.”

Belle gave him a belligerent look. “Really? That’s all you have to say?” Anger gave her a false sense of warmth. “Tell me, did you even wait for Home Office to give the burn notice, or will you just let them know it’s handled after the fact?”

Now that inscrutable mask he calls a face registered some confusion. “Whatever are you on about, dearie?” 

“I’m finished!” She yelled at him. “We couldn’t deliver the Package to Hatter, I barely got Rogers out alive and now he’s fucking dead anyway because he lost the damn plot and tried to stab me.” She shook her head, almost involuntarily. “I planned this mission, I coordinated the players, I was the only one who could have possibly betrayed us! Home Office is going to think I’m the double agent sooner or later—why the hell else are you here?”

The son of bitch smiled. Belle made a jerking motion that would have eventually turned into an attack but he wiggled the gun in warning and the motion died along with her anger. 

“Really? That’s what you think will happen? I didn’t expect so much naïveté from you, sweetheart.” He sounded _pleased_ about the whole thing the smug bastard.

She gave him a cutting look. “That’s the only scenario that makes sense, or will to Home,” she said cooly. “They’ll assume I’m Weaver and you’ll get tea with the queen for killing a turncoat.”

“Oh, I doubt that,” Gold replied. “Considering I’m Weaver.”

There was a stuttering of the world, and then it all clicked back into place. She released her next breath shakily, her eyes darting about as all the pieces game back together.

“You never left the Station.”

“Hatter.”

“Home Office was already looking at you.”

“Of course, but they weren’t looking at _you_. That worked quite well for me.”

“You had me bugged.”

“Several times.”

“Where?” That was probably irrelevant at this point but professional curiosity had not deserted her in her last minutes even if everything else had.

He looked a little shamefaced for the first time that evening. “In your brassieres, primarily. Just a little extra wire.” 

She couldn’t help it, she started laughing. She finally started to shake with cold as well as with hysteria as the rain just kept dumping on their strange little tableau. Clever, her brain thought, as she wanted it to reach for ‘despicable.’

She was hunched over now, staring at the slick cobblestones, enjoying that last fizzle of amusement.

“Alright, get it over with, Gold,” she said without looking up.

To his credit, he stopped playing dumb, and she heard the gun cock dramatically, much closer to her head. She closed her eyes and waited. Then she waited some more.

Finally, with some exasperation, she looked up. Foolish man probably had to gloat or a deliver a final witticism like a bloody film villain. 

His face . . . it was utterly still except his mouth which was twitching like he was trying to bite down on words that weren’t being said. His eyes were wide and anguished. She frowned at him in confusion.

“Gold?”

“ I know what I should do,” he said, almost as though he was explaining it to himself more than her. “I should kill you. I could, right now, and this whole mess would fall into place exactly like you said. And Home would be none the wiser. But the thing is . . . I don’t want to kill you.” He sighed, and to her shock put the gun away, his coat shedding water around them like a fountain. “I’m too old for this, Belle, I’ve been in this game far too long. Because I honestly thought that we were something . . . more to each other. That there was something there.” His smile was back, but it was small and self-loathing. “I know you could never love me, but I thought we were at least friends.” He spread his hands wide, the showman ending the act. “You see? Just an old fool after all.”

Belle couldn’t move. Her mind was racing but her body wouldn’t let her act. His clemency was ludicrous, the man’s an idiot. They stare at one another in silence for long moments. He gives a small shake of his head, and then drops his cane on the ground. Belle doesn’t jump although the movement shocked her. She glanced at it in confusion. Gold whipped his coat off, the same dark wool piece she’d met him in all those weeks ago, and drapes the sodden but warm fabric over her small form. She’s swallowed by it, and while it won’t exactly heat her up much, it was protecting her from the elements a bit more than the tight black sleeveless dress and torn tights she’s currently in.

The rain started to soak Gold’s suit while he picked up his cane.

“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t try and kill me with this,” he said, gesturing with it. “I think that would be a bit pathetic, but since I also don’t plan on just handing over the gun to let you execute me, I’ll understand if things happen.”

“What?” Belle said, and slowly rose from off her knees at last.

Gold gestured impatiently. “You know who I am-what I am. The only way to clear yourself with Home Office is to take me in. Or rather, take me out, as I have no intention of being locked up.” Another wan smile. “Shouldn’t be too hard for you, I know what you can do. Let’s get this over with; you have tea with the queen to get to, after all.”

But, her brain stuttered again. She didn’t _want_ to kill him. She does think of them as Friends. As more?

She’s screwed.

“Are they any other options?” She asked mildly, as though for the time or a cup of coffee.

He gaped a moment, then gathered himself.

“Well, there’s always running,” he replied, a menu item he’s not sure she’ll approve of but offers anyway.

She noddded. She’d assumed that would be the case.

“Alone?”

His jaw worked again. “That . . . had always been the plan.”

She stepped in closer to him. Her legs are wobbly from the cold, the kneeling, the fighting, from life. But they could still support her if she asked them to; they could still run.

He brought one gloved hand up slowly in the rain and traced some invisible line down the side of her face.

“Shall we?” She asked him, and he gave her a shaky nod.

She took hold of his whole arm, and they leaned against each other under the weight of the world. His cane tapped softly as they moved away from the alley, from the body, from their old lives. Who knows how long this will last--they may kill each other tomorrow. Or maybe they’ll kiss, and it will be one with all the layers of who and what they are stripped away and she’ll find out if there’s something _there_ after all. Time would tell.

Tonight, together, they run.

  


_(ah, ah, ah)_

_What a criminal world_

_The boys are like baby-faced girls_

_What a criminal girl_

_She'll show you where to shoot your gun_

_What a typical mother's son_

_The only thing that she enjoys_

_Is a criminal world_

_Where the girls are like baby-faced boys_

  


**Author's Note:**

> Inspiration:  
>  _Atomic Blonde._ Directed by David Leitch, performances by Charlize Theron, James McAvoy, Eddie Marsan, John Goodman, and Toby Jones, 87Eleven et al., 2017.  
>  Johnston, Anthony & Hart, Sam. _The Coldest City_. Oni Press, 2012.  
>  Lockhart, E. _Genuine Fraud_. Delacorte Press, 2017.  
> 


End file.
